Brooklyn Doorman

I'm 33 years old and I live in the Ocean Parkway section of Brooklyn
in New York City. When I was 15 years old I was living in a house not
far away from where I live now.

My friend Rob asked me to come visit him after school one day. It had been
raining the whole day so I decided to wait until the rain stopped before
I went to his house.

The rain stopped around 5 P.M. and I thought it was kind of late so I called
him and told him I decided not to go. For some reason he was insistent
-- because he bought some $1,000-dollar bike and wanted me to see it. I
got there around 8:30 P.M. because I had to eat dinner and do my
homework.

As I was walking towards his stoop, I stopped hearing the cars passing by
and all the city confusion -- everything was quiet. Very unusual for
Brooklyn, a place where two million people live -- but I figured that it
was nothing.

As I got closer to the house there was an odd wind that flew by me, but I
didn't hear its wake -- I just felt a chilling cold sensation. Then
suddenly I saw a man who looked gray and gloomy, smoking a "Guinea
stinker" ( Brooklyn word for an old Italian man's cigar) without any
smoke. I thought maybe it was one of Rob's father's friends but I knew
that was wrong when I was about to get on the stoop. The old man got up,
opened the front door with the stinker still in his mouth, and he
disappeared. Even though the door was open he still kind of passed
through it.

I went into the house and asked Rob who the man was, but Rob looked at me
like I was a moron and told me to stop messing around. But his mother,
who was always on edge about something, had a smile on her face. She
pulled me aside when Rob went to the bathroom and said that the figure
was evil and his vision had been tormenting her since she bought the
house 17 years before. Maybe he had lived in the house previously and
died there -- I don't know. I never saw the man again and Rob moved to
Queens because his dad opened a bakery in the Bronx and wanted a closer
commute. Since then I never went to that house and I have no reason to.
I wonder what the people who bought it would have to say though.